Week 24-28 : A Vacation, A Roof And The Front Takes Shape

A while ago i.e. before we had the 2 kids, we decided that when Charlie was 6 weeks old we would take a long trip back to the UK to visit friends and family. We didn’t really think this through too much, didn’t consider what it would be like to be on the road for that amount of time nor what we would do if we had a cranky baby travelling with us! But we booked, secured Charlie’s passport and off we blindly went for a 4 week tour of our motherland.

The morning we were leaving the roofer’s finally arrived to start putting on the metal roof to our house – I couldn’t believe it. We had weathered storms and torrential downpours and then on the day we were finally vacating the house the roof was going on!

That day was hectic tho to say the least – imagine roofing noise and things raining down from up above, Adrian was knocking out part of the house, we had to empty the living room of furniture for him to do this, and well, I’ll admit I was still packing – all with a wild toddler tearing round the house and a newborn baby. When the bus pulled up at 3pm to take us to the airport I was already super frazzled and that was at the start of a 24 hr journey!!!

I wont lie tho – it was a little scary to pack up your entire family and leave your half-finished house empty for 4 weeks and in the hands of contractors with all our possessions in it but we had no choice so off we went. It was an exciting step forward tho and we were very happy to be receiving updates as we travelled around the UK as to the roof and house progress.

As previously mentioned we had been quoted $25k for a metal roof from local roofing companies, and so we had decided to hire the actual roofer’s as individuals and buy the supplies ourselves and get the job done for around $13k instead. It was a risky move on our part as we were again acting as our own contractor but the risk paid off and we have a fantastic metal roof that adds to the design of the house, is as green as can be and for a fraction of the “retail cost”.

Adrian, our mega-carpenter was also going to finish off the front house extension and put in the big protruding window whilst we were gone. Being in the house when he did this would have been terribly disruptive so it was perfect timing. He was able to knock out the front cupboard and windows without having to worry about keeping the house warm. The one negative was that we were also removing the front door and we hadn’t yet ordered the new one so we would be doorless, which would also mean that the house was open, completely un-lockable for security so we were relying on Adrian securing up sheets of plywood every night to seal the house.

With this new window in the house’s shape has really changed. After finishing off the front Adrian was cracking on with adding some siding to the house to finally give it more of a finished look! We had selected Hardie cement board siding for this and they came pre primed with our color “pavement” on it.

The trip was drawing to a close and after 4 weeks of trekking around the UK (which by the way is far too long with 2 little kids!!) we were excited to come home, sleep in our own beds and see what progress had been made, and this is what we came back too…